Intermittency and chaos for a stochastic non-linear wave equation in dimension 1

Abstract

We consider a non-linear stochastic wave equation driven by space-time white noise in dimension 1. First of all, we state some results about the intermittency of the solution, which have only been carefully studied in some particular cases so far. Then, we establish a comparison principle for the solution, following the ideas of Mueller. We think it is of particular interest to obtain such a result for a hyperbolic equation. Finally, using the results mentioned above, we aim to show that the solution exhibits a chaotic behavior, in a similar way as was established by Conus, Joseph, and Khoshnevisan for the heat equation. We study the two cases where 1. the initial conditions have compact support, where the global maximum of the solution remains bounded and 2. the initial conditions are bounded away from 0, where the global maximum is almost surely infinite. Interesting estimates are also provided on the behavior of the global maximum of the solution.